Hello you! I'd like to thank my friends in the improv troupe Silly-Con Valley for the inspiration for the title of this issue. (By "inspiration" I mean I just literally used it.) Anyway, have this incredibly lovely DJ Koze track, Nein Konig Nein, to tide you through these very silly articles.

It's not just in the TV show Vilicon Salley--wait, Silicon Valley--that characters like Bighead get paid to be quiet or just not do anything. It happens for real at Facebook, Google, and Microsoft and likely other big companies for a variety of reasons, like: keeping a rare expert on a newfangled technology on payroll to not work for someone else; having someone not blab about the poor performance of a large project; senior engineers who "optimized the performance cycles of their own jobs" and only work four hours a day; and maximized pay to the point that there's no reason to work hard. Boy, it kind of makes me regret not digging deeper into compsci and machine learning. But no! It's cool. I like my life. ... Don't I? (I do.)

The tagline says it all: "Silicon Valley wants to save cities. What could go wrong?" A look at a bunch of rich San Franciscans who want to build a city as a technoutopia. There's not much in the way of concrete ideas here, but it's certainly interesting to stare into the minds of people who have enough money (and time) to think "big". (If they succeed, I will happily eat those quotation marks.)

Don't worry, though--nature is here to fight back against technology. It's difficult not to construct a narrative here that Mother Nature has some very strong opinions about our sprawling technophilia, enacted by eagles. (I mean. Is that not what is literally happening?) I guess when the vines burst out of the ground and take down our cell towers, we'll know. Also, don't mind the weird news site--it's just a very sketchy one that copies content from behind paywalled sites like the Wall Street Journal, just for, you know... example.

Never fear, I have brought you an antidote to all of this chaos in the form of this excellent essay. In today's day and age, doing nothing itself is a revolutionary act. This article is about labyrinths, spaces, portals of clouds, bird-noticing, removal, and more. It's really long, and it's worth your time. The essay itself is quite meditative, full of images, and lovely thoughts.

Way's Notes

Heeeey!

I'll be direct: I'm a little hung over right now. But boy oh boy did I have fun! I spent $50 on books that I hope I will actually read one day. There's a bookcase full of books that are begging me to read them--information that must be synthesized! My heart cries at all the knowledge that I can't possibly have, and my child self simply wants to play video games. Ah, to be young again, unaware of time!

Well, anyhow. As I mentioned last week, I'm still seeking around, roving in priorities, wandering inside of myself. I know one thing: I should buy a plant. Get a little more oxygen in my room.

Here's something I've been struggling with lately: fate. Destiny. See, I think that we have inherent destinies and life points, things we will end up hitting that make sense too us. It's the instinct you've had ever since you were a kid, that feeling of a specific thing that just seems obvious. For me, for example, I've always just taken it for granted that I'd be a somewhat well-known person, and that's kind of happened. It makes sense. But here's where it gets tricky: what do you do in between all that stuff?

I keep hoping that my intuition will lead me to the "right" thing to do right now--more improv? acting? writing an epic trilogy? more meditation? more fitness? more X, Y, Z?! But I think that those things may in fact be trivialities. Wait, let me correct myself--not trivialities so much as incidentals, layers that form the big... uh, layer cake, of you, and your life. And right now I can't decide what flavor I want to put on there. Well, I have some ideas in terms of constraints and draws, but the ultimate challenge is in the commitment to a thing--deciding to stick to it and not get yanked away by my fascination and desire to learn literally fucking everything. (I can't tell you how many times I've opened Khan Academy, intent on properly learning linear algebra, only to entirely forget it exists the next day.)

Part of me also seems to be defending my ego-pleasure, my time, my space and idea of self as someone who "needs" to take a Facebook or internet "break". I need to relearn those bookworm-y, build-y craft-y instincts. I'm addicted to the little red dots, the never-ending content, the ideas of being everything to everyone (despite thorough investigation revealing that at essence I am nobody and nothing, per se).

What's it all mean? More work to be done, that's all. More discovery, more feeling, more joy.

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